Political turmoil, tragedies top local headlines

MARK ROBARGE - mrobarge@troyrecord.com
A temporary carbon filtration system is shown in late January as it is being installed outside the village of Hoosick Falls’ water treatment plant.

As troublesome as 2016 was around the world with the deadly scourge of terrorism, war or the threat thereof in several global hotspots and a tumultuous presidential campaign here in the United States, the year was equally as troubling locally.

From tragic deaths to political drama, problems both old and new left local leaders and residents alike looking both expectantly and reluctantly to 2017.

Here are the top 10 stories of 2016 for Troy and the surrounding area, as chosen by The Record’s news staff:

10 Cohoes Music Hall revival: What began as a renovation project under Mayor George Primeau came to fruition after his nephew, Shawn Morse, took office, as the city unveiled a partnership with Albany’s Palace Theater for operation of the historic music hall on Remsen Street, built in 1874. The city spent $30,000 under Primeau to replace the lighting and sound systems, refinish the floor, replace seats, install new carpeting and perform other needed work in the building, which is listed on the state and nation registers of historic places.

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Then under Morse, a former city firefighter elected in November 2015 to replace Primeau, who opted not to run for re-election and died in July after battling cancer, the city reached a deal with the Palace in March to supervise operations and programming under a three-year contract. The hall hosted a grand re-opening in September, with a schedule including concerts, theatrical performances, movies and a wealth of other activities.

9 RPI students battle administration: Responding to what they felt was an attempt by the administration at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute to take over the 125-year-old, student-run Rensselaer Union, hundreds of RPI students, faculty, staff and alumni surrounded the walkway leading to the Curtis R. Priem Experimental Media and Performing Arts Center in late March to protest prior to college President Shirley Ann Jackson’s annual Spring Town Meeting.

Students claimed the abrupt dismissal of the paid, non-student director of the union followed by the public posting by the college of a job opening for an executive director of student activities whose duties, students claimed, were to include running the student union on behalf of the administration was an attempt by Jackson to take over the lucrative facility, which includes a student bookstore,

Students were initially denied permission to organize the protest, but found a way around that, thanks to Bill Puka, a tenured faculty member in the college’s Cognitive Science Department whose areas of teaching and research include moral-political philosophy and democracy and anarchism and who agreed to hold a “teach-in” at the same time and location as the planned protest.

A week after the protest, students said the administration violated its own policy by removing handbills supporting what became known as Save the Union that were posted around campus in advance of Accepted Students Day, when the college welcomed students it had accepted for admittance and looked to influence their final choice. The administration later abandoned the planned hiring, though students twice said the college subsequently tried to post the position again with different job titles.

8 Cousins killed in Troy apartment: The city went nearly 10 months without a homicide in 2016 until Javier Gomez, 23, was found beaten and stabbed to death Oct. 17 inside the East Glen Avenue apartment he shared with his cousin and another person. The body of his cousin, Christian Hernandez, was found a day later by a person walking their dog along a tributary of the Quacken Kill near the intersection of Blue Factory Hill and South roads in Cropseyville.

Luis A. Monge-Guevara, 20, of Clifton Park, Magdalono Perez-Calixto, 28, of Latham, Salomon Najera-Hernandez, 21, of Mexico, and Cresencio Salazar, 26, were charged in the deaths after the first three were taken into custody in Virginia and Salazar was nabbed in New York City. Investigators have released few details of the crimes, though they said all four suspects, as well as the two victims, are believed to be illegal immigrants from Mexico

7 Police gadfly dies on the run: Adam Rupeka was a thorn in the side of area police agencies because of his frequent — and sometimes self-initiated — confrontations with officers, which he recorded and posted online. When he and his girlfriend, Jennifer Ogburn, 26, of Hudson, were accused of subjecting a 15-year-old girl to unwanted sexual contact March 26 in Rupeka’s Lansingburgh home, he claimed it was retribution for his antagonizing police, and the pair feld the area.

Rupeka posted some cryptic videos during their flight, saying he was “on a run for his life” and that police were out to silence him because of his frequent confrontations with officers, which he filmed and posted on YouTube and www.copblock.org, a website that chronicles alleged incidents of police misconduct. Most notable was a confrontation with Saratoga Springs police Officer Nathan Baker on May 16, 2015, during which Rupeka flipped the middle finger at Baker and filming the resulting confrontation, which ended in Rupeka’s arrest. The charges against Rupeka were later dropped, Baker resigned from the force and the city reached a civil settlement with Rupeka.

Rupeka implied in the online videos that the two had run to Canada, but they were found dead April 5 in a room at the Caesar’s Hotel in Tijuana, Mexico. Police in Mexico said the couple apparently committed suicide, with the likely cause of death being drug overdoses.

In addition to his arrest in Saratoga Springs, Rupeka was also charged in the fall of 2015 after a drone police said he was flying over the state Capitol crashed into a chimney atop the building, though those charges were eventually dismissed.

6 Uncle Sam Parade comes to an end: Citing a lack of both financial and volunteer support, the committee that had organized Troy’s iconic Uncle Sam Parade for four decades pulled the plug in June on the annual celebration of Samuel Wilson, the 19th century Troy butcher who reputedly came to be the face of the United States while supplying barrels of beef to the U.S. Army during the War of 1812 and whose image appeared on countless military recruiting posters over the past 125 years.

The city did not go without recognizing Wilson’s 250th birthday in September, however, as a group that included city officials and local residents and business owners hurriedly put together a Sept. 10 block party at the Veterans of Lansingburgh, with plans for a larger community event in 2017. Though turnout for the party was light, organizers were hopeful that with more than three months to put an event together, they could attract more people,

5 Cohoes pedestrian death leads to changes: City officials responded quickly to the June death of a teenager after she was hit by a car as she crossed Route 787 with a host of moves to improve pedestrian safety at the northern end of what starts as a busy interstate highway running north from Exit 23 on the New York State Thruway before becoming a four-lane state highway once it hits the city line.

Both 16-year-old Brittany Knight and William Lamb, 49, were faulted in the early evening accident, with police saying a speeding Lamb ran down Knight as she crossed the road at Bridge Avenue against a traffic light in the intersection. City officials responded by working with the state Department of Transportation to install new buttons on pedestrian signals at the intersection, as well as three others along the busy thoroughfare, that turn traffic lights red in all directions, allowing time for pedestrians to safely cross.

Police also issued more than 400 tickets after increasing enforcement along that stretch of highway, as well as distributing thousands of safety brochures, but Mayor Shawn Morse pushed for turning the four-lane highway into what he calls a “true boulevard.” The project, which has a $15 million price tag, would include adding a median and planting trees to help drivers realize they are no longer on a high-speed expressway as they enter the city.

4 Major breaks cast light on infrastructure concerns: Less than a month after taking the oath of office, new Troy Mayor Patrick Madden became the public face of an ongoing worry for officials throughout the region about aging infrastructure when a 33-inch transmission line for the city water system ruptured in late January in the city’s Lansingburgh neighborhood,

The break flooded much of the surrounding area and disrupted water service throughout the city, as well as in nine other municipalities that purchase water from the city, for more than a week while the city Department of Public Utilities and workers from Troy Boiler Works fashioned a patch to repair the 110-year-old, cast iron pipe that carries water from the city filtration plant.

After spending about $73,000 to repair that break, officials faced a similar problem less than a month later, when a sewer main ruptured beneath Campbell Avenue on Feb. 20, causing a section of the street to collapse in front of the Franklin Terrace Ballroom. DPU crews were delayed for five days in repairing the line because of heavy rain, and it was nearly six weeks before the street was fully repaired.

In the meantime, Madden joined state and local leaders from around the region in calling on the state and federal government to invest more into upgrading water and sewer lines that date back as far as the mid-1800s in come municipalities.

3 Watervliet man dies in police-involved shooting: What Troy police said started out as a routine, early morning traffic stop on April 17 ended at the foot of the Collar City Bridge with a Watervliet man dead and a veteran officer caught in a legal tug of war between Rensselaer County District Attorney Joel Abelove and state Attorney General Eric Schneiderman.

Edson Thevenin, 37, was killed at the end of a brief chase that began about 3:15 a.m., police have said, after city police Sgt. Randy French tried to stop a suspected drunken driver on 6th Avenue. After initially pulling over, police said, Thevenin sped off, nearly running French down before making his way up Hoosick Street and trying to make a U-turn onto the westbound entrance to the Collar City Bridge.

Police said Thevenin hit a barricade, however, and was quickly boxed in by French and Capt. Matthew Montanino, the shift supervisor, who responded to French’s call for assistance. At that point, police said, Thevenin first backed into Montanino’s car, then pulled forward, pinning French between his cruiser and Thevenin’s vehicle. Police said French responded by firing eight shots from his service weapon into the windshield of Thevenin’s car.

Thevenin’s family disputed police accounts of the shooting, however, and called for an independent investigation, later filing a lawsuit against the city. Within days of the incident, Abelove presented the case to a grand jury that cleared French of any wrongdoing, but Schneiderman objected, claiming Abelove and city police initially refused to turn over any of the details of their investigation, in violation of an executive order signed by Gov. Andrew Cuomo in 2014 that gave the attorney general authority to do his own investigation into any police-involved shooting of an unarmed suspect.

The district attorney eventually turned over his records after Schneiderman filed his own lawsuit in state Supreme Court. Results of Schneiderman’s investigation have yet to be released, however.

2 Politics complicates Troy financial woes: As the city faced financial problems reminiscent of a similar crisis in the mid-1990s that led to the borrowing of more than $50 million to remain solvent, it did so in a combative environment. Voters in November 2015 chose Democrat Patrick Madden, a political newcomer, to succeed Mayor Lou Rosamilia after Rosamilia decided not to seek re-election, but also handed control of the City Council to the Republican Party, led by new council President Carmella Mantello, whom Rosamilia had defeated in the 2012 mayoral campaign.

Madden’s administration clashed with the Republican council majority as the city responded to a pair of critical audit reports from the state Comptroller’s Office that blamed much of the problem on past officials routinely underestimating expenses and overestimating revenues in city budgets dating back at least five years, as well as an independent audit performed at the council’s behest that estimated the city could face a deficit of as much as $3.9 million in its 2016 budget.

Acrimony between the two side continued throughout the year, culminating when Madden unveiled in October a 2017 budget proposal that called for an unprecedented, 28.2 percent property tax increase, which he said was necessary simply to continue offering existing services. Four Republican council members, led by Mantello, attempted to force the mayor to cut that increase to single digits by refusing to allow the city to exceed the 0.68 percent, state-mandated cap on any property tax increase.

After Madden offered a compromise that included a 14.5 percent tax hike but called for the layoffs of eight city employees, the gutting of city recreation programs and the elimination of several police department initiatives, however, one member of Mantello’s so-called Majority Steering Committee, council President Pro Tem Mark McGrath, changed his vote to give Madden the sixth vote necessary to exceed the tax cap.

1 Towns devastated by water contamination: A pair of rural Rensselaer County municipalities found themselves unwittingly dragged into the nationwide discussion of water quality after dangerously high levels of a cancer-causing substance was found in public and private water supplies in Hoosick Falls and Petersburgh.

Saint-Gobain Performance Plastics in Hoosick Falls and Taconic Plastics in Petersburgh were identified as the sources of perfluorooctanoic acid in municipal water supplies in both communities, as well as private wells. Both companies took responsibility for the contamination and agreed to such steps as providing bottled water to affected residents and installing filtration systems at both municipalities’ water treatment plants, as well as for private wells that were also contaminated.

Residents and local officials in both communities expressed concern over the speed with which state and federal officials addressed the problem, which came to light around the same time officials in Flint, Michigan, were being blasted for failing to address unacceptably high levels of lead in that city’s water system. Hoosick Falls residents specifically criticized Gov. Andrew Cuomo for failing to even visit the village until making a Sunday morning visit March 13 — after officials said PFOA levels had fallen below federal advisory levels — with little public notice.

Criticism of the state response continued throughout the summer, with state legislators blasting Cuomo, as well as state Health Commissioner Dr. Howard Zucker, for what they called a delayed response to the crisis. The governor and his aides, however, blamed federal regulators for not doing more to address PFOA, a toxic chemical used for decades primarily to make Teflon coating for cookware.